Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
29
Mar 21

Second vaccine dose is now onboard

Saw another pharmacist today, got another shot. Pushed groceries into the little room because my lovely bride, who had arrived early at the store, did some shopping. She was getting her second dose in another room. Today an older gentleman jabbed me in the arm. White hair, white coat, giant needle, very official. He could have been anyone though, couldn’t he?

He said he wasn’t counting how many people he’d been giving shots to. Said he’d his first dose. Said I needed to relax my arm. Said I didn’t bleed but, and I quote, “I’ll give you a bandage anyway, so if anyone asks you to do any chores you can point to it and go ‘But uh uh, my arrrrrrrrrrmuh.”

So there I was in a pharmacist’s office, getting a minor medical procedure with major implications, while a rack of ribs sat in a cart behind me.

I thanked him, with eye contact, so he knew I meant it, and pushed the groceries back outside where my wife was standing. She was looking at her phone, pretending to wonder where the groceries went. She had her second shot. I had my second shot. We sat in some chairs to make sure we had no major reactions. We watched the very end of a car chase from Los Angeles on our phones. This is how things are done.

After we waited for a bit, we got gas and went to the house. We put away the groceries and stood by the kitchen counter and discussed how we were fortunate to have gotten through this to the degree that we have. And that was it. She rode her bike on the trainer, I could already feel the side effects coming on, so I just sat down and marveled at the world.

I think I may play hooky tomorrow and wait on my super powers to kick in.

Before our Saturday bike ride I finally changed out the Look cleats on my shoes. I probably should have done this in the fall, but it’s one of those things I don’t think about until I’m already riding and then, hey, too late. Recently my shoe came out of a pedal while I was standing out of the saddle and going uphill and how I remained upright is a mystery. And that adrenaline spike is also a motivation.

So these are the old ones, showing some six years or so of wear on them.

I have no idea how long cleats last for other people. It has to do with how you beat them up while walking around more than how much you ride or anything like that. But I do know that I eeked just about as much life out of these things as I could. And, so after lunch on Saturday I put on these pretty new ones.

So you can sorta tell, in all the places the plastic has been destroyed, how they were prone to user error when they were clipped into pedals. If there’s no there there, you can’t really expect these things to work to maximum efficiency. I’m sure engineers have a term for this concept.

This was part of our ride, a 26-mile route intent to give us our first real hill of the year. This was before the hill, but after the detour. A road was washed out — it’s always under water, seems like — and so we had to find a new hill. No matter! We were in a good place for hills. It found us soon after this.

I saw this little scene about to happen up the road so I had to pedal hard to catch up to capture my masterpiece. Almost all of the colors in her kit were reflected by nature in this photograph. Needed more flowers.

And fewer hills.

We were going up one, remember. I needed fewer hills than one.

Indoor riding this winter allowed me to climb pretend versions of famed climbs from all over France. And while that was fun and challenging and probably beneficial in some way, I am not convinced it helped with actual climbing that much. Or maybe it did. I’ve no real way of knowing. I only know this, at the end of this little climb that was about 240-feet of total ascent, I was ready for more of the flat parts.

I shot a little video of this, so that we could end this on something better than just the idea of huffing and puffing slowly and inefficiently.

I think this part is important. We got our vaccines today. I said, I’m going to sit here and nurse this sudden prickly throat, and The Yankee said “I’m going to ride my bike.”

Friday / IU / photo / site / television / video — Comments Off
26
Mar 21

Now with more spring in the thing

As promised some two weeks ago, there is a new look to the front page of this humble website. Here is a hint as to the current theme.

And you can see the whole presentation if you just click this little link. That’s from a little flowering tree in the backyard. In a few more weeks it will meet it’s full glory. But we’ll probably be featuring a different look by then.

Quite day today, for the most part. I worked on questions for an interview I recorded late this afternoon. The last official act of the week was editing it. I’ll publish the thing on Monday. It was pleasant. A thoroughly delightful chat with a delightful guy. And, like so much of life, there were few concrete answers. You know that going into a lot of things, it doesn’t ameliorate the feeling after the fact though. He said as much, at one point, too. Occupational hazard for him, you see. He’s spent his whole career in that world. He recounted a conversation he had when he was in college. A friend of his who was studying physics just couldn’t comprehend the inconclusive nature of the soft sciences. You could sum it up as ‘I could work a lifetime on a problem and not be able to see it through. Or know the result. Or know if I was correct.’

I guess we all make peace with some sort of limitations.

Or, maybe, if the idea of that makes you a little twitchy — as it does me — the limitation is misplaced. The journey is the destination and all that. I’m sure a great many books have been written about that approach for the goal- and the task-oriented. There’s a bookstore shelf full of those somewhere. Each with a less satisfying resolution than the last. They say things like, Sure you need provisions from the grocery store, but did you see those clouds in the sky? And have you ever really wondered how those things made it to the store and then found yourself at a working farm asking questions about the history of dairy farming? And why did you drive there, anyway? What does that say about us? That we are slaves to cars, the ultimate sign of freedom? And what of the lives you touched along the way?

Anyway, while it was a little perplexing from an issue-conflict-resolution perspective, it was a fine interview. I’ll put it here Monday.

We do have some sports videos for you. Students produced these last night and they were ready for you, piping hot and fresh, this morning. Highlights and updates, updates and highlights:

And if you want to hear people pick their favorite baseball teams as a pre-season analysis, then we’ve got you covered there, too.

I had a conversation about changing sports just to see how the strategy would change. What if you took two timeouts away from basketball? What if you really only played those last five minutes anyway? Say the XFL had the opportunity to really explore their rule changes before Covid came around, what does that do to your play calling? What would happen if the NCAA took a rooting financial interest in elevating women’s basketball and tried to make, you know, money off the thing? What would that look like? Suppose there weren’t end-of-inning resets for baserunners in baseball. What takes place then? Why not send the Detroit Tigers and the Pittsburgh Pirates down to AAA ball for a year, since they clearly aren’t playing well where they are?

(The answers are: The games would be 15 faster. The games would be 90 minutes shorter. It gets more aggressive. We may never find out because the NCAA is full of shortsighted leadership. Also, they’d pass the buck until they could claim the victory as their own, brought on solely and only because of their fearless leadership. You’d routinely have baseball games will final scores like 19-8, fewer utility infielders, more speed, larger pitching staffs and team psychologists to help ballplayers cope with it all. And who says the Tigers and Pirates aren’t already playing minor league ball?)

I had this conversation with some students who haven’t yet been bored enough to think up things like this. But there comes a day, some day when the only game they can watch are the Detroit Tigers … and they’re going to start thinking these things through.

But hopefully it won’t be on a weekend. A weekend! Which is upon us now! Have a delightful one!

IU / photo / podcast / Thursday — Comments Off
25
Mar 21

Life is full of color, and also a podcast

While this isn’t where I post all of my little outfit choices — last week notwithstanding, when I was really just trying to share … something — I was rather proud with how this one worked out. You shouldn’t, they say, mix prints. But what do they know anyway? A small plaid and some small polka dots? That shouldn’t be a thing. And your pocket square, they say, should be a mild contrast, to compliment the other thing. A complimentary contrast, if you will. No one really says that in this context, but maybe they should. Anyway, blue and purple are next to one another on the color wheel, and so maybe this shouldn’t work. But it seemed like a good idea this morning, and I think it was.

Maybe it doesn’t work, but I thought it did.

It got an emoji-filled comment on Instagram, which is where I’m putting these, so I can sorta keep track of them. But now I wonder if I should put them in another other place.

I bought these flowers last month. Seemed like a good idea that morning. But as that particular day went on I grew irritated at something that was, of course, of vital importance. I don’t recall what it was. Something was off — or something wasn’t working right, or it was a hard day at work, who knows — and I’d committed myself to going to the store, which has become a stressful exercise over this past year.

So I bought flowers in a bit of a mood, basically. And maybe that was the secret. They lasted until this week. We refilled the vase three times. Five weeks on one little batch of cheap fresh cuts.

Maybe it was the indirect light, or cutting the stems at an angle, or the thickness of the vase, or the quality of the water from the tap. Probably it was that I put so much sugar in the water. Or the mood? I hope it was not the mood.

Now, would you like to hear about the day’s Zoom meetings? Or how I taught someone how to edit audio this afternoon, but just listen to this instead.

It seemed a good topic. And it seemed a decent enough almost-commercial. And, as it turns out, it was quite interesting. The more I thought about the questions I would ask the more I convinced myself this was a good topic. How do college admissions work in a shutdown pandemic world? If you can’t give tours, how do you tell your story? If you can’t show it off, how do you sell the student experience?

Serendipity stepped in, too. As I was working through the two weeks-and-change of trying to get a date figured out with her assistant the university announced they would allow on-campus tours once again. Outdoor tours. Small groups. I saw one the other day, on my way to take a mitigation test.

I am giving one in a few weeks to a young man who has written me throughout the year, eager to see what his college experience will look like. It seemed a good idea, it turns out, because it is.

adventures / cycling / music / photo / television / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
24
Mar 21

We rode bikes today, it was great, but I repeat myself

We have television shows to show off. Here’s the news show. Headlines! Sports! Weather! A look abroad! Everything but traffic. (It’s a mess out there, anyway, may as well stay where you are and watch this. You’re already cozy anyhow. You don’t really need to go anywhere.)

And here’s the pop culture show. They had a band in to celebrate Women Are Awesome month. Women are awesome, and these two ladies are too. They’re studying various elements of the music industry and have plans for the future and rock ‘n; roll right now.

Musical performances in this studio never work quite the way they are intended. It’s just not a room designed for that kind of sound, and you have to try to work with a specific type of equipment which is, also, designed for a different kind of sound. The two-piece band was game to try, and that’s all anyone can ask of rock ‘n’ roll in the end.

Well, in the real end, I’m just pleased we can help create these experiences for students. I didn’t produce a lot of musical performances at 20-years-old, but this group of burgeoning young television pros are doing it. It’s nice to have nice things. And this is, if you don’t count a few things I’ve just happened to walk past outdoors last fall, the first live music I’ve heard in a year. We all deserve a little live music. You choose the genre. You deserve as much at this point.

Oh we had a lovely bike ride today. I messed up the route, as is my habit. But it all worked out perfectly, as is the nature of bike rides. We got in an easy 20 miles, and I think I could have gone a smidge harder if necessary. Most of it ranged over our familiar base route, but we did add in an extra few roads just for fun.

Because I knew that section would only have four cars (See? Total mess out there.) on it this evening, that’s where I took my pictures.

The Yankee liked this one, because my shadow made an appearance.

That wasn’t what I was really going for, but it took a while for me to understand the sun, I guess.

There are two big turns on that road, and the county has seen fit to put big signs on the road noting them. I knew they were up ahead, and knew that was the picture I wanted. I missed the first one. Nailed the second.

Next time we’re on that road, if she hasn’t dropped me by then, I’ll try to get a video in that same spot.

The next time we’re on that road she’ll be in peak form and will be well and truly dropping me. So I guess that means I’ll have to get stronger and faster, too, just so I can make personal memes. The lengths you go to …

television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
23
Mar 21

I’ll only say this

I’ve now watched two episodes of this gameshow being produced. One last year at Valentines and this one which happened, for reasons that were never made clear to me, last Friday. And I won’t give away the secrets, but let me say if you knew what I now know, you’d find yourself rethinking every episode of The Dating Game or Love Connection that you ever watched.

Every episode.

They have fun with this. They enjoyed imagining follow ups. What if cameras tagged along on “the date” and so on. My favorite was an episode that was designed to be cringeworthy, and everyone is in on it, except the three contestants. Oh the fun you could have.

Anyway, that was in the studio last Friday, they released it yesterday, which I remembered at some point while being in the studio for other programs this evening, which will be available to you tomorrow. Tonight’s programs mark the second half of the production season for the spring semester. Down the stretch they come. And most of the shows are running like the well-oiled machines they should be at this point. It’s a pleasure to see.